Andy Murray’s big win
Scotland’s Andy Murray, 23, overcame two tennis giants and weather delays at Toronto’s Rexall Centre to win the Rogers Cup championship for the second year in a row. He beat Rafael Nadal in straight sets and ground down Roger Federer in the final, before clambering into the crowd to hug his mother.

The soldier takes a bride
Retired infantry Capt. Trevor Greene has put aside work on a book about his remarkable recovery from an axe attack four years ago in Afghanistan to soldier away on a new writing project: wedding thank-you cards. In late July, Greene married Debbie Lepore, the woman he credits with helping drag him from the edge of death after his traumatic brain injury and setting him on the path to recovery. They married in Nanaimo, B.C., before 120 guests, including their five-year-old daughter Grace, in Lepore’s sister’s backyard, “which had been transformed into a bucolic, candlelit sanctuary for the occasion,” he said in an email to Maclean’s. He may not have walked down the aisle, but he stood at a set of parallel bars as Lepore became Mrs. Greene. They’ll soon resume work on the book, and he’s added workouts in a pool to his rehab routine. “My physio said that is where I will take my first steps in the fullness of time,” says Greene.

Tempest in a breadbox
The European economy teeters on the brink and yet a hot topic in German politics is the dietary preference of German President Christian Wulff. He is under fire for importing bread to Berlin from distant Hanover, the capital of Lower Saxony, where he’d served as premier. The 300-km trip is a waste of carbon, fumed Claudia Haemmerling, a Green party representative from Berlin. The Bild newspaper joined the chorus: “Why don’t you eat Berlin bread, Mr. President?” The controversy annoys Hanover baker Jochen Gaues. “My bread is made by hand, and [is] top quality,” he said.

Turns out she can
When ballet dancer Alex Wong tore his Achilles tendon, the producers of So You Think You Can Dance feared they couldn’t reprise a popular hip-hop routine he’d done with past contestant tWitch. Ellen DeGeneres volunteered as a surprise replacement. Instead of going for laughs, she brought down the house by busting some killer moves.

Darwin, check. Up next: Einstein.
For those who think Wikipedia is written by pinkos, there is Conservapedia, a “trustworthy” alternative founded by Andy Schlafly, the son of U.S. ultra-conservative activist Phyllis Schlafly. The site attempts to answer such vexing questions as, “Why do non-conservatives exist?” It also finds conspiracies in the strangest of places, including Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. “It is heavily promoted by liberals who like its encouragement of relativism and its tendency to mislead people in how they view the world,” says Conservapedia. Adds Schlafly in a footnote: “Virtually no one who is taught and believes relativity continues to read the Bible.” Case closed.

A screwdriver, barkeep. And one for my cat.
A quest to rescue his cat has netted an impaired driving charge for Graeme Swann, one of England’s top cricketers. Swann, who faces trial this week, told police he returned to his home in Nottinghamshire after a night out to find his cat was trapped under the floorboards. He set out in his Porsche Cayenne at 3 a.m. to buy screwdrivers, and was pulled over. A blood test found he was above the legal limit. Over-consumption was also the downfall of Iran’s biggest soccer star, Ali Karimi. The midfielder was fired Sunday by Steel Azin FC for failing to fast during Ramadan. Muslims are required to fast from dawn until dusk during the holy month. Karimi “insulted” league officials when confronted. Karimi said he is a good Muslim. “I do respect Islam.”

The week in Botox-bashingDesperate Housewives star Teri Hatcher may have made the biggest splash after pictures she posted of herself—au naturel, wet hair, no makeup, and the sort of wrinkles you’d expect on a 45-year-old—went viral. But she wasn’t the only Hollywood beauty to boo Botox last week. It’s unfortunate, actress Julia Roberts, 42, told Elle magazine, that “we live in such a panicked, dysmorphic society where women don’t even give themselves a chance to see what they’ll look like as older persons.” And Modern Family star Sofia Vergara, 38, told Esquire she will grow old without “major surgeries.” “That thing with the cheeks. Like Madonna. Who do they think they’re fooling?”

The house that Jean built
Hip-hop star Wyclef Jean is finding his run for president of Haiti is tougher than the music biz. The New York Times took a hard look at his Haitian charity, Yéle Haiti, and found some tent camps it claims to support have received nothing. “Not even a cookie!” said Ricardo Dorvelus, a camp leader. Just a third of the US$10.5 million it raised after the earthquake has reportedly been distributed—with Jean one of the beneficiaries. Yéle paid his production company for a benefit he performed, and paid his radio stations to promote it. Jean calls the charges “hearsay.”

Tiny terrors
It has the makings of a movie script, but to hear Republican congressman Louie Gohmert tell it, real “terror babies” are growing up in the U.S. The Texan says terrorists send pregnant women to the U.S. to give birth. The kids, U.S. citizens, return to their home countries, and are “raised and coddled as future terrorists,” he says. Then, “20, 30 years down the road, they can be sent in to help destroy our way of life.” Gohmert, a member of the Tea Party caucus, says he learned of the plot from a woman on a plane. Tom Fuentes, a former top FBI official, calls the claim “ludicrous.”

AACK!
It’s been the bane of feminists, a comfort to moms and a mystery to men everywhere for 34 years. The comic strip “Cathy” ends its run in 1,400 newspapers on Oct. 2, its founder Cathy Guisewite announced last week. “I am 60 and I just realized that there is a lot more that I want to do creatively,” she said. Certainly there was no shortage of ideas. She had three of them, which she has strip-mined mercilessly since 1976: her weight, her relationships with her exasperating mother and hapless boyfriend-husband, Irving, and shopping. Oh, and chocolate. So, okay, four. Guisewite says she has one regret—that Cathy never had children. Want to bet the series ends with a baby bump?

We, we, we oughta have known
Not long after singer Alanis Morissette married rapper Mario “Souleye” Treadway in May, she made a regular visit to her doctor only to be told she’s pregnant. Isn’t it ironic? Well, no. But the news was a pleasant surprise, Morissette, now five months pregnant, told E! channel host Chelsea Handler. She was promoting her guest role on the series Weeds, a herb she “enjoys” occasionally. The interviewer also dug up the fact that her hometown of Ottawa named a day after her in 1996. “What do people do on Alanis Morissette Day, scream at their ex-boyfriends?” Handler asked. “Yeah,” Morissette replied, “and they don long wigs and get really upset and passive aggressive.”

A bear of a problem
A black bear broke into a home in Laconia, N.H., last week, helped itself to fruit on the kitchen counter, drank from the fish bowl, then rescued a stuffed teddy bear it found inside. Mary Beth Parkinson said the toy, which belonged to one of her sons, was later found in the backyard, smelling much more bearish than it used to. Meanwhile, in Weirsdale, Fla., conservation officers saved a trash-raiding six-month-old black bear that jammed its head inside a wide-mouthed plastic jar. “Jarhead” wandered for 10 days, unable to eat or drink, before officers tranquilized the mother and freed it.

Love in a time of mourningSonia Stratis and Chris Tedeschi, the daughter and stepson of victims of Pan Am Flight 103, will marry this week, reports the Daily Beast. They met in Virginia at a 20th anniversary memorial dinner for the victims of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing. “I was intrigued by him,” said 28-year-old Stratis, a handbag designer, of their first encounter. Tedeschi, 33, an ad executive, said he, too, was smitten. “I don’t want to make this sound cheesy or anything, but I met her and I knew.” Frank Duggan, president of a non-profit victims’ group, calls the wedding “a wonderful chapter in an otherwise horrible saga. Ain’t love grand?”

Lafleur scores again
The Quebec Court of Appeal acquitted hockey great Guy Lafleur on Tuesday of giving contradictory evidence at a bail hearing for his son Mark. Lafleur had said his son spent two weekends at home when he was released from a drug rehab centre, when he really spent them in a hotel with his 16-year-old girlfriend. But the appeal court found no evidence Mark was required to remain at his parents’ residence. The Hall of Famer has filed a $3.5-million lawsuit against Montreal police and the Crown over his 2008 arrest.

A woman’s workGiorgia Boscolo, 24, has broken through 900 years of Venetian tradition as the first woman to join the Italian city’s all-male gondoliers’ guild. Boscolo, a mother of two and the daughter of a retired gondolier, spent hundreds of hours preparing for the tough practical and written exam. Her achievement won praise from Venice’s mayor, Giorgio Orsoni, who said the 425-member guild had a “tendency of excessive machismo.” Boscolo dismisses fears she may not be able to control the large boats: “Childbirth is much more difficult.”

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